Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Is it only me who is sweating it out today? The Dew Point – a summer match to the wind chill index, except, take note all you weather people, it is way less comprehensible, so quit acting as if we understand what it really is – it’s high though. That means my shirt and my skin are stuck in some infernal way, bonded through the heat and humidity. (I am offering up a better marker here: why don’t you, weather types, instead of measuring Dew Points, measure how many men it would take to pry the shirt off my damp back? So much easier to visualize than Dew Points. Who the hell cares about Dew Points.)

Nina once proclaimed (that is a verb that sooooo suits her) that she hates air conditioning. So I was going to ask her to have a late night drink this week but I remembered how unpleasant it is to sit next to her at a bar in summer hell weather days. She pulls on sweater after sweater and complains how the coldest day in Wisconsin is actually right now just because the inside temperatures are hovering near 49 degrees F., thanks to this state’s love affair with the AC.

Of course, this is all one of those Nina-ggerations. I happen to know that she has snubbed the Polish way of controlling the heat inside as well. She tells me Poles pack in a bunch of people, turn off the fans and leave you to take a whiff of the ten different types of body odor that quickly fill the space. Fun! And the much adored by her (okay, and by me) French? Obviously they love to feel warm and French toasty. They’re forever choking themselves in scarves and wearing tailored coats and it’s hard to ever lay eyes on that awesome, curvaceous French shoulder because it is always hiding under some silky number or other. Indoors, they sit tightly together and smoke cigarettes and do all sorts of things to ensure that there is no flow of cool air anywhere around. So Nina, let me say this much: all countries seem to have their own issues with temperatures, inside and out.

I find myself lapsing into silence when Nina goes on one of her “in this country” or “in that country” spins. There's this desperation about it, have you noticed? I'm thinking that she is really culturally confused and always evaluating these easy clichés to help her sort through the muddle she is in. I’m silent and I am also sorry for her. I would hate not having a home base. She talks about having roots in Poland, but what kind of roots are we looking at? Pretty thin roots if most of her years have been in Wisconsin. Next time you see her, go ahead: ask her where she’s from. She cannot answer that without pausing for ten minutes and looking pained. She will not just blurt out Wisconsin, or Poland, or New York, or America. She deliberates, she qualifies and she looks stupid doing it. She should just pick a place, say Greenland, nice and exotic, and stick with it.

Hey, let me offer my own generalization: here in America, we don’t really care where a person’s from anyway when we ask, we’re all just making polite conversation, biding our time until we can get to the real stuff that’s troubling us – whether the person voted for Bush, or whether they share our deep-rooted fears of communism and naked bodies. Whereas for Nina, the question of “where you’re from” brings on the beads of sweat and causes her internal organs to convulse.

Which brings me back to the beads of sweat. Hey, Nina, let’s wait with the drink until the heat breaks. Or if you don’t want to wait – no more about the air conditioning already, okay?

The Ocean bloggerette herself (nlc) suggested that I tell you something about relationships. Specifically: my relationships. I think she thinks they are totally weird and therefore good posting material.

Fine. But let me say this first: however you read this post, I do not think that I am a mean kind of guy. I’m not demanding either. The women in my life have left me because they did not understand the complicated way I function under emotional pressure. (Did I already say how awesome it is to write anonymously?)

I do get prickly when people, okay women-type people, claim they understand my little quirks and then six months into the relationship – whammo! – it’s suddenly an issue that I like my toes rubbed in a certain way. Six months they rub and tickle and pinch and then suddenly it’s ew, you’re gross and too demanding and don’t ever ask me to do it again! But you knew this about me! It’s not like I was going to change something so major! I’m speaking metaphorically here. I don’t really like having my toes rubbed.

My current love interest is different. Let’s call her Jill the Pill. Jill and I, we have been damn mean to each other from like day two. So it’s the sex that keeps it alive, you say. Bullshit. I mean, sure, sex is sex. But the real reason we keep at each other is that there is this Magnetic Force coming from Mother Earth herself and it does weird things to your insides. I’ll be damned if I know how else to explain it. I know that I do not have the strength to resist The Force. When Jill’s there again, vibrating the cell in my pocket, I crumble faster than overcooked bacon. At least until we turn all mean again. This has been going on for a long long time.

How does this post relate to the Ocean author? Nina and I have talked about this and she told me how she had to jump an ocean to avoid repeatedly going back to a certain dude who, I am told, tortured her inside and out for like five or six years straight (I don’t know how she was to him; women never give you that kind of info about themselves – they’re all honest and full of revelations about how the other person is to them, but about their own behavior? Zippo. For all I know, she kicked his ass hard).

Jumping an ocean. That’s kind of drastic. I couldn’t do it. For one, I don’t think I’d fit in with the French, even though I love ‘em all to pieces. And the Italian women would drive me insane. I heard they really scream during sex. Ever see that Italian movie, was it by Lina Wertmuller? Like maybe the Seduction of Mimi? Man, that woman could not keep quiet!

But I admire Nina for ditching the Polish dude in the end. Just as I know that any year now, Jill and I will split for good. Hell, you have got to keep the cruel stuff way suppressed, at least until the waning years of life when you can let it loose, knowing that no woman’s going to dump you at a time when you are still capable of taking her to the hospital for her hip replacement surgery or something.